The present invention relates to automatic call distributors in a telephone system.
In the past, automatic call distributors (ACD) have been known to route calls to a number of agents in a telephone system. In such call distributors, the telephone system recognized application calls originating from the outside which are directed to any one of a plurality of agents on a basis when the agents are most available, and position calls which are made directly to a particular agent. However, no distinction has been made between position calls to the particular agent which originated outside the ACD and position calls which originated inside the ACD, nor were the position calls prioritized.
As a result, the agent may have to handle a plurality of low priority calls before handling calls of higher priority which should have been handled earlier, resulting in inconvenience to the callers and inefficiency of the system.